Nicos Poulantzas, Fascism and Dictatorship: The Third International and the Problem of Fascism

Poulantzas’s
book is the first major Marxist study of German and Italian fascism to
appear since the Second World War. It carefully distinguishes between
fascism as a mass movement before the seizure of power and fascism as an
entrenched machinery of dictatorship. It compares the distinct class
components of the counter-revolutionary blocs mobilzed by fascism in
Germany and Italy; analyses the changing relations between the petty
bourgeoisie and big capital in the evolution of fascism; discusses the
structures of the fascist state itself, as an emergency regime for the
defense of capital; and provides a sustained and documented criticism of
official Comintern attitudes and policies towards fascism in the
fateful years after the Versailles settlement. Fascism and Dictatorship
represents a challenging synthesis of factual evidence and conceptual
analysis that has been rare in Marxist political theory to date.